Alan in Indio heard everything went pear-shaped on MythBusters and wondered why it means that things went wrong. The literal adjective pear-shaped can describe body shape or, in linguistics, vocal production, but the slang failure sense appears in...
A clumsy person may be known as a bull in a china shop or a bull in a china closet. The former came into use first, in the early 1800s, but bull in china closet is more evocative. Plus, according to the MythBusters, a bull in a china shop is...
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s witches’ knickers! What do you call stray plastic bags that litter the landscape? Also, what it means to do something like a boss, how to hyphenate correctly, and why we say we have a crush on...
For many Southerners, it’s very picture of eagerness and alacrity: He was all over that like a duck on a June bug! Martha and Grant reveal the memorable image behind this curious expression. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
